Darkly shining: Ars speaks with Vin Diesel… game developer

Have you ever wondered just how serious Vin Diesel is about video games? The …

Tie-ins—games based on movies—have earned a well-deserved reputation for shoddy quality. As a result, such games are seen as little more than attempts to separate fans of the films from some extra cash. But one title stands out among the masses of inferior games: The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay.

Butcher Bay was one of those games that took us all by surprise when it came out in 2004. Not only did it have a great story, but it also featured some of the most intense action we'd seen in a long while and some mighty-fine stealth sequences to boot. The high quality of the game was, needless to say, a delight, far better than the film version of The Chronicles of Riddick.

Five years later, it looks like lightning might strike twice, thanks to The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena. Playing the recently released demo reveals a game that is just as tense and thrilling as its predecessor.

Wanting to know more about, Ars sat down recently with Vin Diesel, Tigon's Head of Production Ian Stevens, and lead writer John Platten. Our conversation revealed something that most gamers don't know: Assault on Dark Athena is the fruition of a love story between its designers and the source material.

"When I first started playing games, I felt guilty about how much I loved these video games," Diesel explained. In fact, it wasn't something he told people about when he was starting out as an actor until he appeared in Saving Private Ryan and found out that Steven Spielberg was getting involved with something called Medal of Honor. "Somehow, that gave me the green card to launch a video game company that would speak to a favorite pastime of mine."

While many games have provided canon story ties to a movie universe, few have done them quite as well as Escape from Butcher Bay did, and Dark Athena looks like it will follow in its footsteps. This is mainly due to the fact that developers Tigon and Starbreeze have no desire to produce any tie-ins to the Riddick Universe that are forgettable in any way.

Assault on Dark Athena looks like it will repeat the quality experience that was Escape from Butcher Bay

"We don't try to turn out a game every six months," Diesel explained. "We take great pride in creating content that is deep, that you can play again and again, that complies with the film experience. One of the coolest things about having this company is bridging great films with great games and having them be accountable for one another."

"These games take years to develop," added Stevens. "We invest a lot of ourselves in them, personally… We've got a great opportunity now to continue to build momentum for this franchise."

Diesel revealed that a new Chronicles of Riddick film was in development (though beyond being written by David Twohy, details are scarce). What little was revealed sounded interesting: the first half of the movie will feature a return to the fast-paced action of Pitch Black; Riddick is alone on a strange planet while being hunted by bloodthirsty aliens. Meanwhile, the overall film will retain a strong tie to the mythology established in the later films.

Involving developers with a solid reputation for quality games certainly makes it easier to keep building momentum for what started out as a cult franchise, especially when they're working on the follow-up to a surprisingly big hit. "Escape from Butcher Bay was, in many ways, a bit of a viral thing for us," said Stevens. "I don't think as many people expected it to be as well-received as it was… This has been an entirely different experience for us. People have been very excited to see what we've done with Assault on Dark Athena."

Of course, Riddick isn't the only franchise Tigon is working on; Stevens made a point of briefly mentioning the soon-to-be-released Wheelman.

"What's so cool about that is that we were able to launch this IP to such a degree that both the movie and the game are being created simultaneously," he said. "That's rare; hopefully, within two years, we'll have pulled this off. It'll be the first time that a movie and a game have been produced simultaneously... The movie's at Paramount, the game's at Midway and Ubisoft. We're very excited about it."